BOB SCRIBNER Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Europe

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28 Bob Scribnersimple-minded person she purported to be before her inquisitors, simplywriting down what she was told by her confessor. Rather we have theimpression of a shrewd and street-wise young woman, who knew exactlyhow to play up to a gender stereotype that would deflect responsibilityfrom herself. So effective was her strategy that the investigation was indefinitelyprolonged, her guards were won over and even the Inquisitorcompromised, and finally she escaped with a relatively light punishment.Even the historian, provided with all the copious documents of the case,cannot determine her true role behind the strategic disguise 34 . Inquisitorsand judges were certainly wily men of some worldly experience and theywere often able to read behind courtroom strategies, as Michael Weisserpointed out many years ago in discussing peasant litigation for slander inthe villages of the Monies. Yet in some circumstances the inquisitor maystill be as uninformed as the anthropologist. Indeed, the most assiduousinvestigator, Jean de Coras, the magistrate of the Parlement of Toulousewho popularised the case of Martin Guerre, was still unable to enlightenus about Bertrande de Rols' motives in accepting an imposter into herhome and bed 35 . The best way forward in such cases may involve notseeking out some dispassionate observer who may serve as an early modernsurrogate for the ethno-historian. Rather, we could employ the awarenessof contemporary anthropology that the anthropologist is always indialogue with his or her subjects, and that it is this very dialogue thatconstitutes the hermeneutic possibilities of the encounter with anotherculture. That is, just as the anthropologist may have to be content withchronicling a culture responding to his or her intrusions, the ethno-historianmay have to be content to focus on points of encounter where twomentalities or worlds meet, the official and the inofficial, the clerical andthe lay, the urban and the rural, providing only a refracted image of thesubordinate culture.One of the most challenging departures in these debates over the methodsof historical anthropology has been a recent contribution by GananathObeyesekere, in part a reply to Marshall Sahlins' fascinating essay of1985 on the death of James Cook. Sahlins reorientated our thinking about34 Richard L. Kagan, Lucretia's Dreams. Politics and Prophecy in Sixteenth CenturySpain (Berkeley, 1990).35 M. Weisser, The Peasants of the Monies (Chicago, 1972), 101 - 112; N. Z. Davis,The Return of Martin Guerre (Cambridge, Mass., 1983).
Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Europe 29the death of James Cook away from the view that the explorer was slainby treacherous natives who had inexplicably turned hostile by attemptingto reconstruct the 'native's point of view' in terms of Hawaiian religiousbelief. He placed Cook's arrival at, and return to, the Hawaiian islands in1779 within the context of Hawaiian cosmology and mythology. Becauseof the date of his arrival at the island, the Hawaiians identified Cookwith the god Lono, whose coming was celebrated as a harbinger offertility. Thus, the excessive hospitality offered to Cook and his men,including the willing sexual favours of young Hawaiian women, accordingto Sahlins were not to be understood as primitive childlike innocencewhich later turned to treachery, but as a ritual celebration of the appearanceof the god which would ensure plenty for the island. However,when Cook was forced by a damaged mast to return to the island only afew days after his departure, Lono had reappeared at an irregular time;and to make matters worse, Cook had sailed around the island the 'wrongway', in the reverse direction, thus unwittingly introducing an anomalyinto the Hawaiian cosmology which threatened their very existence bythe implied undermining of the guarantee of fertility. There was only "onepossible solution, the god had to be ritually slain to restore cosmic order.Thus, Sahlins was not only able to explain the killing of Cook within thethought-world of the aborigines, he was even able to identify who hadperformed the deed in terms of ritual function 36 .Obeyesekere, however, perceived in this analysis a classic example ofthe way in which Western myth models of the apotheosis of a civilisinghero had been ascribed to the Hawaiians. Obeyesekere's critique proceedson four levels. First, he criticises readings of the historical sources whichhave led Sahlins and others to the conclusions that the Hawaiians regardedCook as a god (rather than revering him as equivalent to a chief).Second, he challenges Sahlins' reading of both Hawaiian religion andritual, especially for its structuralist presuppositions that make them lookstereotyped and rigid and the Hawaiians look naive and irrational.Obeyesekere stresses by contrast the Hawaiians' practical rationality andtheir ritual flexibility and open-endedness. Third, he shows the ways inwhich European myths of apotheosis were projected onto the death of36 Marshall Sahlins, Islands of History (Chicago, 1985), 104-35. Sahlins also publishedan earlier version of this argument in Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities:Structure in the Early History of the Sandwich Islands (Ann Arbor, 1981).
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BOB SCRIBNER Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Europe

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